On September 24, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger talked on the telephone at Camp David from 11:37 am to 11:52 am. The Camp David Study Table taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 154-007 of the White House Tapes.
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You're turned.
Hello, Mr. President.
Hi, Henry.
How are you?
I'm fine.
Sorry to disturb you.
No, that's right.
Fine, fine.
We have a problem in Uganda, and the problem is that the British are very worried that there may be a massacre of 7,000 British that got there, and they're scattered all over the country.
Of course.
And they would like to have some secret talks with us about some logistics help.
Sure, we'll have them.
They've tried it earlier this week, and State has turned them down.
Screw State.
State's always on the side of the blacks.
The hell with them.
Well, I knew this would be your... Well, I just can't understand why we haven't had them before.
You know, like that thing on Burundi.
Now, I want State's ass reamed out on that for not... Henry, in the whole Burundi business, I've been watching it in the press.
Did you know State has not sent one memorandum over to us on it?
Or have they?
Or have you had something that I haven't seen?
No, no, they have not.
Well, how do you feel about it?
Well, I think... Don't you really feel...
I mean, just let's be totally honest.
Isn't a person a person?
God damn it.
You know, there are those that, you know, they talk about Vietnam, these people far away that we don't know.
And you remember that poor old Chamberlain talks about the Czechs, that they were far away and we don't know them very well.
Well, now, God damn it, people are people, in my opinion.
Well, it's not only that.
I don't mean our national interest gets involved, but every time...
Every time that anybody else gets involved, every time that one other individual arrests, you have a little pressure group.
Your state goes up the wall.
But I'm getting tired of this business of letting these Africans eat 100,000 people and do nothing about it.
And when they have, and all these bleeding hearts in this country who say we like to kill yellow people.
That's right.
There haven't been as many killed in the eight years of the war as were killed in three months in Burundi.
Henry, the whole point is, and also...
Well, it's the thing that Agnew stuck to.
McGovern, where Agnew pointed out, now they're talking about how many we have bombed in the north.
And I've told your staff to get the figures for me.
How many?
How many South Vietnamese or anti-communist North Vietnamese have been killed by the North Vietnamese government?
Civilians.
How many?
It's unbelievable.
Nobody gives a damn.
And that's what they're involved in.
I know what the Uganda thing is.
What it is, it's just like Burundi.
The state nuisance attitude, the attitude of the state is to be for whatever black government is in power.
Am I right or wrong?
100% right.
And that basically, Henry, was the problem on Nigeria.
Now, frankly, I was on the side of the Biafran, not because of Catholics, and you were too, not because of Catholics, but the state was on the side of the Nigerian government.
Why?
Because they said, well, all the other governments would come apart.
Well, frankly, I'm almost to the opinion myself, and this is far down the road, we need a new African policy.
But first of all, we shouldn't have 42 ambassadors to these goddamn countries.
In the second place, I mean, you know, at the same level as anybody else.
In the second place, my own view is that some federations down there are what are needed or something.
I don't know.
But we can talk about that later.
But at the present time...
Looking at Uganda, of course we've got to help those 7,000 people.
I asked Rogers about this when we met with Bush.
Were you there?
Yes, I was there.
Well, you remember I said, how about this?
He said, well, we've got a plan to evacuate the Americans.
Well, now, that's a fine how-to-do.
What the hell are the damn British going to do?
7,000 of them, they'll be murdered.
Isn't that really the problem or not?
That is exactly the problem.
And the British are in the bush.
All of ours are in Entepe.
And actually, they haven't turned against ours so much yet, but they have turned against the British.
No, I understand.
Now, what I would recommend, Mr. President, in order to keep this thing from turning into a huge leak, is that you send...
a defense department man over a civilian, not a military guy.
Well, we got anybody we can trust?
Well, that can even leak, if necessary, and say all he's empowered to discuss is the logistics.
Yeah.
If there has to be a joint evacuation now, no one can blame us for that.
Then we can tell the British we can use that as a bait if they have further requests to take them up here in Washington.
Well, good.
Good.
Let me go.
Let me put it another way.
Why don't we have good pasture
uh from his place i mean uh just go over and uh and uh i don't care whether it's at a high level you mean you they start killing is that it one is they might start killing second we might get a tremendous uproar that we are planning a military campaign
Okay.
While we can achieve most of it by using, in fact, we can achieve all of it.
And we can alert Goodpasture to start looking to his assets.
That we can do on an independent basis.
Well, I think you should tell Goodpasture, look, NATO's sitting over there on its ass doing nothing anyway.
Why don't we tell Goodpasture to get all the assets for the purpose of evacuation that we can have, right?
Right.
In other words, NATO assets, let's let the NATO countries do it.
That's a good idea.
We can get Goodpaster to pay a visit.
I just kind of feel that's a good idea.
Well, he can pay it on NATO visits.
On NATO visits.
Right.
And then tell him in confidence that I want him to discuss this matter of assets with him.
You know, Goodpaster will love having something to do.
How's that sound to you?
I think that, well... And then send the defense man, too.
We'll send the defense man, so that's the overt.
What man do you have in mind?
Somebody out of another sub.
I thought we would pick a low-key guy just to get the facts.
Right now, we don't even have the facts.
How about somebody?
Well, why don't we, better still, why don't we just have somebody from your office go over who knows these people?
You're afraid that I'll get in it then, huh?
I'm afraid with the campaign going on.
I think the major thing now is to get information, but Goodpass is an excellent idea.
No reason why he can't, is there?
No, that's an excellent idea.
You see, the problem is that I agree that if we get in it, they'll say we're trying to get in it.
But on the other hand, we've got to be prepared to help the British.
We can't have a British slaughter down there.
The British have got enough problems.
Absolutely, and it would be at its grace anyway.
Have they asked?
Well, they sent a personal message to you at midnight last night because they've been stonewalled by the State Department all week, asking whether we could start some secret technical talks in London.
And that's what I think we should respond to.
I love this Good Pastor idea.
Why don't you, on our private channel, get a hold of him and say that Good Pastor will be paying a NATO visit, but that he has
private instructions from me to discuss on a secret basis what the hell we can do.
How does that sound?
That sounds excellent.
And then you call Andy, and you say, no, Andy, you've got to deny this.
This conversation never took place, but by God, we're not going to let these people be destroyed by these people.
Let's do that.
That'll reassure the British.
They just want to know privately what we're preparing.
Actually, I could meet Andy in Paris and give it to him orally.
Very good.
Very good.
But you should let the British know that we've talked about it and that's a good pasture thing.
And then if you want to send the defense guy, you can.
I think you should send somebody over it.
All right.
Because then that's the...
Overt, we'll say, for the purpose of evacuating Americans and British.
Exactly.
Isn't it awful, though, that this goddamn guy in the head of Uganda, Henry, is an ape?
He's an ape without education.
That's probably no disadvantage.
I mean, you figure that asshole that was the head of Ghana had a brilliant education in the United States.
I mean, so let's face it.
No, no, what I mean is he really is a prehistoric monster.
But the same with Burundi.
I really, really got to shake up the African, well, all the departments, but the African Department of State, Henry, is a disgrace.
When I receive those, you know, I receive ambassadors.
All I receive is three out of four of them are African ambassadors.
They're nice little guys and so forth and so on, but they don't hit anything.
I mean, and the state just treats them, I mean, what?
What do you think they're up to?
What is our African policy?
Will you tell me?
Our African policy, I just took a paragraph out of a speech that Rogers was happy to accept.
It's no respect to Rogers.
But this guy Pedersen had two paragraphs in Rogers' U.N. speech, which was an all-out attack on South Africa, on Zambia.
Never.
Never.
And they are anti-white in Africa.
They are exceptionally liberal, but you don't hear them say a peep.
You know, when one of these governments is not fully democratic, that they don't like, they scream.
But when they murder people in Burundi, when this fellow in Uganda has a reign of terror, you don't ever get a protest.
On Burundi.
State underestimated, and I know that your people were using it.
You used the figure 100,000.
I understand it's 200,000.
Now, I want the Belgian ambassador.
Do you know him here in Washington?
I've met him.
I don't know him.
He's a decent fellow?
He's a decent guy.
Fine.
I want you, or I think you're the one to do it.
You call him in, and it'd be a very nice touch anyway, and just say on a private basis, we'd like to know your estimate of what the hell's happened in Burundi.
I really want to know.
I don't mean there's anything we're going to do about it.
Nothing is going to come out.
But we ought to know it.
But, you know, let's get it from the Belgians.
Don't you agree?
I agree completely.
I mean, on this one, no...
Now that you mention Pettersson, he's one that's going to go the day after the election.
That son of a bitch has done things in all...
I mean, he's...
It's an incolorable situation where every time we want to do something, we have to worry how we can finagle it.
Right.
So that it doesn't leak.
Now we've got another month where we've got to put up with it.
That's all.
Well, you'll do this then...
Immediately.
And don't you think that... Who will you call?
You'll call Bert Trank or...
I'll first call Kroma...
Oh, yeah, okay.
But he'll keep it?
He'll keep it, absolutely.
Good.
Because he delivered the message.
Call Crummer.
That's the better way to do it anyway.
Tell him to pass it to the, that I'm outraged for the whole damn thing, and actually we've got to handle it in a very discreet way, and that we're going to do it two ways.
We're going to send Andy over on an official visit, and that the British should defer discussion of NATO problems, and then we're going to send the defense guy over overtly, right?
Right.
In the meantime, speaking to that, I was looking at the paper this morning and some long, dope story saying there's a big division, a sharp division within the administration on the next round of assault.
I haven't even seen that yet.
Yeah, well, what they said, I said, what the hell is this?
So I read it, and they say, well, there is one philosophy, the philosophy that, which incidentally, of course, is the McGovern philosophy, too.
the philosophy that all that the United States needs to have is enough nuclear weapons so that in the event of a first strike by the other side that we will be able to hit back, whereas there is the other philosophy that we must not limit ourselves to massive retaliation, basically.
Of course, the second is ours, you know.
It's what we believe.
But the first is arms control, right?
Absolutely.
And McGovern, right.
But the point is that these sons of bitches would be putting that out now.
It gets me.
Now, that arms control agency, as you know, their budget, I looked at it again, is $9,500,000.
They're $9,500,000 worth.
of intellectual assholes over there cutting us up day after day after day.
And the day after the election, I'm going to fire the whole goddamn bunch all out.
I think it would be a great national service.
You know what I mean?
It's just ridiculous that these people are sitting over there, and they know what they're doing.
You know very well, Henry, that when we were over there in Moscow and all this that was being raised hell,
They were raising hell.
They were stirring it up.
Yeah, but they were stirring it up then, the bastards.
Oh, I know, for the hard line, but basically... Hard line, because they couldn't bear that you would make that agreement.
Exactly, and they run it themselves to look good.
But I'll tell you, that's...
When is Smith going to resign, or has he?
No, he's going to resign right after the election.
We don't have to push him.
All right.
Well, he wants to resign.
That's fine.
We'll give him his... We're sort of not pushing it before the election.
Well, for obvious reasons.
Exactly.
But he's already said to me if he doesn't get any encouragement, he'll leave.
And I haven't given him any encouragement because I didn't think you would.
No, the basis for it is not that we're not giving him any encouragement.
We're not giving anybody any encouragement.
Everybody's going to leave.
We don't want Smith around again.
No more.
None of these people because...
But the main thing, I'm talking about the bureaucracy over there, Henry.
We cannot have the bureaucrats cutting us up.
Well, they cut us up on issues that it's even worse.
They don't even raise these issues in the government anymore.
That's right.
They just raise them in the press.
They know they can't get anywhere making a proposal.
That's right.
Well, this was in the Star, I think, so you'll enjoy reading it if you've digested your breakfast.
Okay.
But anyway, this is good.
I think it's good to let the British know we're going to help.
You might give the Belgian ambassador a call and say, don't report this, but the president wants to know what the hell went on, and for him to set it up for Wednesday or Thursday of next week.
Would you do it?
I'd absolutely do it.
I want to know what happened in Burundi.
I want a real cold cock on that, just for future reference.
Absolutely.
Because in these African governments, they're at the idea.
that we're going to stand still on the ground that any African government that was overthrew a colonial power thereby becomes lily white by our standards and thereby beyond criticism is ridiculous.
This damn double standard is just unbelievable.
Out of the question.
Well, anyway.
I'll move on that right away.
Good luck.